Recently in the Trial - Evidence category:
There was, for example, no cooperating witness testifying at trial. There was no evidence of any drug records implicating him. The cocaine was well concealed and not visible. There was no proof of any narcotics-related conversation to which Torres was a party . . . [T]he government presented no evidence as to the nature of Torres's associations with the persons who shipped the cocaine or with the persons who expected to distribute it. There was no evidence of a sizeable payment to Torres that might reflect an expectation related to the million-dollar street value of the cocaine . . . Nor was there evidence that Torres was placed in a position of trust . . . Torres was never in a position to be alone with the Packages until the driver of the minivan fled the mall upon spotting the police surveillance. This record does not lend itself to an inference that Torres was so trusted that he must have known that he was dealing with narcotics.
Lawyers: Edward Zas (Federal Defenders, Inc.); AUSAs Nicholas L. McQuaid, Michael D. Maimin
Fraud based on the “deprivation of honest services” is a controversial charge likely to elicit some notable rulings from the Supreme Court this term, as noted here. In particular, the cases of Jeffrey Skilling and Conrad Black may produce decisions that reign in the reach of honest services fraud in the context of private businesses, two varieties of which have been identified by the Second Circuit in United States v. Rybicki: cases involving bribes or kickbacks, and cases involving self-dealing. Bribery/kickback cases need no introduction. Self-dealing cases, on the other hand, usually involve the defendant causing his employer to do business with a corporation or enterprise in which the defendant has a secret, undisclosed interest. In Rybicki, the Second Circuit adds that "[i]n the self-dealing context, though not in the bribery context, the defendant's behavior must [.] cause, or at least be capable of causing, some detriment – perhaps some economic or pecuniary detriment – to the employer.”
This distinction is at issue in United States v. Demizo, 2009 WL 2163099 (EDNY July 20, 2009), where the defendant was convicted after trial of securities fraud and making false statements. Because EDNY Judge Gleeson concluded, however, that there was no factual predicate to treat the case as a self-dealing one, he declined to defendant’s requested jury charge on the issue of detriment. The case also includes an interesting discussion on the issue of permitting the defendant to introduce at trial a statement the government made in a brief under the "admission of a party opponent” rule.
Refusal to Charge:
Relying on the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Rybicki, 354 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2003), the court rejected the argument that the jury should have been instructed that the fraud involved self-dealing as opposed to kickbacks, and the government was therefore required to prove a possible detriment to the employers.
Assuming the validity of the legal argument, the court deemed any such instruction inappropriate because the defense “failed to identify any evidence in the record that could permit the jury to find that this was a self-dealing case.” As the Second Circuit has suggested, self-dealing involves a situation where the defendant causes the employer to do business with a corporation or other enterprise in which the defendant has a “secret interest.” That term has not been defined, but the relevant cases all involve defendants who had undisclosed ownership interests in those entities and Demizio “did not argue that the record showed he had such a cognizable interest in the firms to which he steered his employer’s business.”
The court also rejected the defense’s argument that the case involved self-dealing because the government alleged a conflict of interest because, “every fraud case, including the kickback scheme at issue in Rybicki, involve a conflict of interest in that every individual has a personal interest in pocketing a kickback while every employer has an interest in hiring people who eschew such conduct.”
Refusal to Admit a Statement from a Government Brief
The defense also argued that it should have been permitted to introduce into evidence a government pre-trial brief submitted in opposition to a request for a bill of particulars, reasoning that statements made by an attorney concerning a matter within his employment may be admissible against the represented party.
The court explained that while the Second Circuit has previously considered the admissibility of statements made in a bill of particulars and opening statements made by defense counsel at a previous trial and found that, while not inadmissible per se, policy concerns weigh against allowing such statements to be admitted as admissions by a party-opponent. Against that backdrop, Judge Gleeson reasoned that because the brief was a legal memoranda and not a formal pleading, it was merely an assertion about the charges in the indictment – which is a charge of the grand jury – and could not properly be deemed a statement by the government .
Finally, rejecting the claim that the brief was evidence that the government had changed its theory during the trial, the court found the assertion irrelevant “to any factual issue submitted to the jury” and, in any event, the probative value was substantially outweighed by the risk of confusion.
Attorneys: David Spears, Charlita Mays (Spears & Imes LLP) (defendant); AUSA’s Winston Chan, Kelly T. Currie, Winston Paes
Its admission ignored a “common sense precaution which should clearly be taken ... to limit the prosecutor’s presentation to such facts ... as are reasonably necessary to prove the point for which the evidence is admitted, and to exclude unsavory details which go beyond what is necessary to make the point.” David W. Louisell & Christopher B. Mueller, Federal Evidence § 140, at 209 (rev. ed.1985); see also United States v. Bradwell, 388 F.2d 619, 622 (2d Cir.1968) (discussing the undue prejudice that can result when the “minute peg of relevancy [is] entirely obscured by the dirty linen hung upon it” (citation omitted)).
Lawyers (Farmer): Jeremy Epstein, Seth Kean, Grace Lee, Rebecca Boon (Shearman & Sterling LLP) (defendant); AUSAs Ilene Jaroslaw, Peter Norling
Lawyers (Williams): Donald Yanella (defendant); AUSAs Justin Lerer, Jo Ann Navickas
Behind the convictions of criminal defense lawyers Robert Simels and Arienne Irving yesterday on charges of witness tampering and obstruction of justice is a profound question: should there be different rules for the prosecution of lawyers? The Simels prosecutors thought yes, and drafted a unique protocol for the minimization of communications intercepted under a Title III warrant. EDNY Judge Gleeson disagreed. In United States v. Simels, 2009 WL 1924746 (E.D.N.Y. July 2, 2009), he suppressed the fruits of the Title III surveillance because the protocol was internally inconsistent and improperly minimized dissemination rather than the initial interception. In addition to being a detailed primer on Title III minimization issues, especially in the context of privileged communications, the decision joins its companion, discussed here, as another important landmark in the small body of jurisprudence on how (and how not) to prosecute a lawyer for an act of lawyering.
Facts
As part of an investigation into allegations that defense attorneys Robert Simels and Arienne Irving were seeking to influence witnesses in the upcoming trial of their client Shaheed Kahn, the government obtained an order under Title III permitting it to intercept communications between Simels, Irving and Kahn, in the attorneys’ visiting rooms at MCC.
Because the targets included two lawyers, the order contained two minimization provisions, both proposed by the government. The first was a standard provision, requiring the monitoring agents “to minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception under [Title III], including . . . privileged communications.” The second directed the agents to record (without listening to) all communications between Simels or Irving and their client, and provided for after-the-fact minimization by “Wall Agents” and a “Wall AUSA.”
Two meetings were recorded under the order, and only the second minimization directive was followed (in other words, the meetings were recorded in their entirety and not contemporaneously monitored). Simels and Irving were later indicted on obstruction of justice and witness tampering charges, among others. They moved to suppress the fruits of the wiretap surveillance because of a failure to minimize.
Minimization Cannot Occur After the Horse Has Bolted
Granting the motion and suppressing the communications, Judge Gleeson found that the government’s minimization efforts here were unreasonable, and the post-interception minimization procedure violated Title III. For one thing, the two minimization provisions in the order were internally inconsistent. “By definition, an agent cannot minimize the interception of communications that should not be intercepted by intercepting all communications and sorting them out later.” Moreover, while Title III permits post-interception minimization in two circumstances (where the communications are in code or in a foreign language), neither applied here.
[T]he way to avoid intercepting privileged or nonpertinent communications (as opposed to merely avoiding the unlawful dissemination of communications that should never have been intercepted in the first place) is take reasonable steps not to intercept them. Automatically recording everything, even where that is followed by a post-interception minimization protocol, virtually guaranteed the interception of communications the government should not have seized. The post-interception minimization may have closed the barn door, but the horse was already gone . . . When the government deliberately intercepts nonpertinent communications, it is no comfort to those whose privacy has been invaded that only government actors not involved in a particular criminal investigation will be listening to them.
Privileged Communications Are Not Special
The prosecutors had taken pains to avoid disseminating privileged communications, but Judge Gleeson debunked the idea that privileged communications should not be intercepted in wiretaps. “Communications undoubtedly occur that are both pertinent to the crimes enumerated in an order issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2518 and privileged under some other body of law, and nothing in Title III prohibits the interception of such communications based on their privileged status.”
Good Faith Not a Defense
Although the court found that the prosecutors’ good faith was “indisputable,” that was not relevant to the outcome. Title III has its own statutory exclusionary rule, and Judge Gleeson found “no indication in the statute that good faith is relevant to the operation of this exclusionary rule.”
Comment
In developing their ill-fated protocol, the Simels prosecutors, to their credit, recognized the serious ramifications of bugging MCC’s attorney interview rooms. But from a defense perspective, if you’re challenging the fruits of such interceptions on minimization grounds, the horse has already bolted. What is far more interesting here is what led to the wiretap authorizations in the first place: several visits to Simels’ law office by a cooperating witness wearing a wire, who proceeded to discuss defense strategy in Khan’s case with Simels and Irving. Judge Gleeson had denied Simels’ concededly “novel” motion to suppress these consensual recordings and their fruits on the grounds that the government’s use of a wired cooperator in these circumstances was unconstitutional. But the motion begs the important question of whether there should be some formal rules requiring judicial supervision before wired cooperators are deployed into a law office. Bad lawyers do not deserve special treatment, but aggressive advocacy does, and that kind of advocacy may be chilled by the kinds of highly intrusive surveillance and investigative techniques employed in this case.
Contributor Robert Culp writes:
Common sense would seem to dictate that a dissent by a district judge sitting by designation is a rare occurrence. Indeed, a rough calculation in the Second Circuit found some 2500 cases decided in the last five years with a district judge sitting by designation with only 14 dissents by those judges. And only three of those dissents were in criminal cases. (Apologies if the research methodology missed some.)
In United States v. Mercado, 2009 WL 2096234 (2d Cir. 2009. (July 17, 2009), Judge Droney, a district judge in the District of Connecticut and formerly the U.S. Attorney in that district, dissented from a panel affirmance on an issue of whether the district court should have admitted “other act” evidence under Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and concluded the error was sufficient to warrant a new trial. This is the kind of issue where appellate judges inevitably state the importance of deference to district judges, so the prospect of a district judge sitting by designation disagreeing with two appellate colleagues on such an issue makes for interesting reading indeed.
Majority Opinion
The case is presented unusually in that the dissent is where the background and overall case description is found while the majority opinion is limited to conclusions and analysis. After rejecting an evidentiary sufficiency claim as to which there was no disagreement, the majority opinion turned to the Rule 404(b) issue. Noting applicability of the “abuse of discretion” standard, the majority turns abruptly to its conclusion that the other act evidence was admissible because it went to “knowledge and intent” and furnished background to the charges and prior dealings between the alleged conspirators. Noting that the defense in part was that defendant did not know he was participating in any drug transaction, the Court concluded that “prior gun sales” can “suggest that defendant was not an innocent pawn taken by surprise by the drug transaction.” The Court went on to conclude that the probative value of the evidence outweighed any prejudice, and that the prior gun transactions were “not especially worse or shocking than the transactions charged.” The Court also noted that the district court gave limiting instructions to the jury.
Judge Droney’s Dissent
Judge Droney wrote that while he was mindful of the “considerable deference accorded a trial court’s evidentiary rulings” and the abuse of discretion standard, he felt obligated to dissent. He then turned to what is absent in the majority opinion – the background of the Rule 404(b) proffer in the context of the case. Defendant Townsend was charged with participating in narcotics trafficking by driving principals to various locations for errands, including one where a drug transaction ensued, and by having a gun in the car at one point. The main defense in the case was that defendant in driving others on various errands was merely present and did not knowingly join any drug conspiracy, and in fact he was not paid for his role. (In fact, just such a defense persuaded EDNY Judge Sifton to grant a judgment of acquittal recently in Heras.) The Rule 404(b) evidence was that defendant had previously arranged for sale of a handgun to one of the principals, Jones – who at all relevant times for purposes of the crimes charged and the Rule 404(b) evidence was cooperating with law enforcement.
Judge Droney, detailing and distinguishing Circuit precedent, argued that the Rule 404(b) act of arranging for a gun purchase did not bear any similarity to the charge of driving others to a drug transaction allegedly with intent to join a drug conspiracy. Nor, argued Judge Droney, did it bear on the relationship between Townsend and Jones since it was undisputed that they had been friends since childhood. Judge Droney also concluded that the prejudice outweighed any probative value – that the district court concluded little more than the Rule 404(b) evidence was “no worse” than the crimes charged, and that the proffer was not at all necessary to establish any relationship between Townsend and Jones. It also concerned Judge Droney that the Rule 404(b) evidence itself grew out of the importuning of a government cooperating witness. Judge Droney also concluded that the limiting instructions by the district court were erroneous, describing the evidence as being relevant to an aspect of knowledge that was actually undisputed and mischaracterizing the relevant time period. Judge Droney concluded finally that the error was not harmless, calling the government’s case as to defendant’s knowing participation weak and based essentially on the word of a cooperator Jones whose credibility had been seriously undermined at trial.
Comment
The Rule 404(b) issues in the case alone make it a worthwhile read. A critic might find that the majority’s conclusion that the gun evidence suggested that Townsend was not an “innocent pawn” itself suggests the very character inference that Rule 404(b) is supposed to exclude – that because defendant committed a previous “bad” act involving Jones, he more likely did so as to the charged offense as well – and that the lack of similarity between the Rule 404(b) act and the charged offense disrupts any nexus to knowledge or intent. Nor, arguably, is it so easy to understand why the evidence was necessary to explain a relationship between undisputed lifelong friends, particularly where that relationship was skewed by Jones becoming a cooperating witness at the time of the events in question. But beyond Rule 404(b), the case makes for good theater because a district judge, presumably well aware of the deference accorded to trial evidentiary rulings, disagreed with his appellate colleagues about whether such deference was due here. Whether Judge Droney was more drawing his own conclusion than deferring to the trial court, or whether he was undertaking a pointed explication of why deference was not appropriate is the crux of the debate in this case.
Lawyers: Elizabeth E. Macedonio (Defendant); AUSAs Amanda Kramer and Michael Levy
Facts
The defendant, Frederic Bourke, was charged with violations of the FCPA for allegedly making payments to Azeri officials to encourage the privatization of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic and to permit him and others to participate in that privatization. He moved in limine to preclude the government from introducing at trial evidence of corruption in Azerbaijan to prove his knowledge of the bribes at issue. Under the FCPA, knowledge of a circumstance may be established by evidence that “a person is aware of a high probability of the existence of such circumstance, unless the person actually believes that such circumstance does not exist.” The evidence the government sought to introduce included “that Azerbaijan was known to be a corrupt nation, that the post-Communist privatization processes in other countries have been tainted by corrupt practices, that SOCAR was a strategic asset of Azerbaijan, and that Kozeny [Bourke’s co-defendant] was notorious as the ‘Pirate of Prague.’”
Conscious Avoidance and the FCPA
Agreeing with the defendant that the government may not introduce background evidence of corruption to show that he “should have known” that Azeri officials were being bribed, Judge Scheindlin held that here, however, the purpose of the evidence was to show that “a person of Bourke’s means, who was considering making a large investment in a venture in Azerbaijan, would have at least been aware of the high probability that bribes were being paid.” As such, it was relevant and admissible.
Defendant and Attorney Proffers
Critically, the court found no prejudice because the government would be able to establish the necessary factual basis for a conscious avoidance instruction. In fact, the government’s factual basis rested on the defendant’s own admissions in proffers to the government. Upon learning that he was the subject of a government investigation, Mr. Bourke appeared for a proffer session with the prosecutor, and admitted that he had been “warned by his counsel that Azerbaijan was the ‘Wild West’ and that doing business in Azerbaijan was like the movie ‘Chinatown,’ where there are ‘no rules.’” For good measure, one of his lawyers had turned over a recording of a conversation between Bourke, another investor and their attorneys in which Bourke revealed his knowledge of the dark side of business in Central Asia, e.g. “Do you think business is done at arm’s length in this part of the world?” (There are some intriguing waiver issues here, but the decision doesn’t explore them, only to note that everyone appeared to agree that the defendant had waiver his attorney-client privilege in his proffer.)
Imputing Others’ Knowledge to Defendant
Finally, the decision addresses another unusual and important issue: the circumstances under which the government may introduce and impute to the defendant evidence of a third party’s knowledge. Here, this knowledge could be imputed to Bourke based on his travels in a private jet with Viktor Kozeny (the alleged mastermind behind the SOCAR investment)and Bourke’s friendliness with Kozeny's “inner circle.” “Based on these [close business] relationships the jury has a fair basis to infer that the knowledge of these individuals can be imputed to Bourke.”
Comment
Much ink will be spilled on the conscious avoidance doctrine in an FCPA prosecution. But a lesson we can all (re)learn from this case is that proffers to the government in criminal cases can have a huge downside and should not be entered into lightly. There may have been compelling strategic reasons for Bourke's proffer in this case, but it always astonishes me how often and easily lawyers will escort the clients in for meetings with the prosecutors, instead of proceeding by attorney proffer or asserting the right to remain silent. As a wily criminal defense lawyer once said to me, “nothing is often the perfect thing to say and an excellent thing to do.”
Lawyers: Harold Haddon and Saskia Jordan, Haddon Morgan Mueller Jordan Mackey & Foreman P.C., John Cline and K.C. Maxwell, Jones Day LLP, Dan Webb, James Reich, Jr. and Christopher Paolella, Winston & Strawn LLP (defendant); AUSA Harry Chernoff
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